The bushwhack killing of a deputy sheriff in Lincoln County and the brutal murder of the deputy's wife in Santa Fe bring Police Chief Kevin Kerney and his Mescalero Apache son, Sergeant Clayton Istee, back together in a double homicide investigation that is soon linked to a major drug trafficking scheme and the cold-blooded slaughter of two women in Albuquerque. With few clues, no known motives, and no suspects, the investigation turns into a search...

Backlands continues the story of Patrick Kerney; his ex-wife, Emma; and their young son, Matthew, shortly after the tragic battlefield death of their eldest son, CJ, at the end of World War I. Scarred by the loss of an older brother he idolized, estranged from a father he barely knows, and deeply troubled by the failing health of a mother he adores, eight-year-old Matthew is suddenly and irrevocably forced to set aside his childhood and take on responsibilities...

In the wake of his wife's death in childbirth and the killing of his brother on the West Texas plains, John Kerney is forced to give up his ranch, leave his son behind, and strike out in search of the murdering outlaws and a place to start over. He drifts south hiring on as a hand, until he meets a man who offers him work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory and forever changes his life. Spanning the years 1875 to 1918, Hard Country reinvents...

"Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney and his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Sara Brannon, are on leave and eagerly awaiting the birth of their son when a prominent gay attorney is gunned down outside his office by an unknown assailant. Called to the crime scene and faced with scanty evidence and no apparent motive, Kerney directs his chief of detectives to delve into the victim's personal and professional life, a decision that ultimately leads to a SWAT...

In this complex tale of greed and revenge, best-selling author Michael McGarrity shrewdly blends riveting action with magnificent southwestern scenery. Serpent Gate portrays former Santa Fe policeman Kevin Kerney in a perilous struggle against corrupt officers, New Mexico politicians, and a deadly enemy from the past. Recruited for the State police by the new chief, Kerney searches the mountainous countryside for a patrolman's killer. Quickly solving...

McGarrity's novels keep getting richer as they change focus slightly with each new publisher. This novel, the fifth in the series, is the first to be issued by Dutton, McGarrity's third publisher; it's also the most personal book of the series, with Kerney, Deputy Chief of the New Mexico State Police, now married to career U.S. Army officer Lt. Col. Sara Brannon and about to become a millionaire by selling the huge tract of land he inherited in Hermit's...

"Detective Clayton Istee investigates New Mexico borderland killings by an elusive Mexican assassin with ties to a drug cartel. In Michael McGarrity's final, propulsive Kevin Kerney novel, the nightmare of the Mexican drug wars spills across the border with the discovery of a couple in a Las Cruces hotel, scalped with their throats cut. Because of the unusual MO, Detective Clayton Istee suspects that the murders are drug related, but a lack of evidence...

After years away on the pro rodeo circuit, Johnny Jordan struts into Santa Fe to ask his boyhood friend, Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney, to serve as a technical advisor on a contemporary Western movie to be filmed along the Mexican border. Kerney agrees and plans a working vacation on location, in a remote area of the state known as the Bootheel, with his wife, Lt. Colonel Sara Brannon, and their three-year-old son, Patrick. But, a dead man on...

"Retired police chief Kevin Kerney returns--this time as the prime suspect in a brutal cold-case murder. A long-unsolved mystery gets a grim new break when the bones of Kim Ward are unearthed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, forty-five years after her disappearance. Suspicion swiftly falls on her old college boyfriend: none other than retired police chief Kevin Kerney. The chief's hopes of clearing his name look bleak in the face of damning evidence compiled...

Few first mysteries are as fresh and powerful as this rich Southwestern tale of tough, credible characters involved in a complex, danger-fraught plot centering around stolen historical artifacts. Kevin Kerney is still recovering from the physical and psychic wounds that forced his retirement from the Santa Fe police force, when his former partner asks him to search for his son-Kerney's godson-who is AWOL from nearby White Sands Missile Range. At the...